


A Lesson in Loathing

by Jaydee_Faire



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Angst, M/M, Memories, Pre-Canon, a slight whiff of incest as usual, tiny angry laurent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-22
Updated: 2016-08-22
Packaged: 2018-08-10 07:35:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7835854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jaydee_Faire/pseuds/Jaydee_Faire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Laurent, at twelve years old, learns how to hate someone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Lesson in Loathing

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fill for the #capriweek2k16 prompt "Memories." I had been playing around with the idea of Auguste having a pet for a while, and then I came up with this while sitting at my dad's house waiting for the creek to rise.

Laurent De Vere was twelve years old, and he had just learned how to hate someone.

Truthfully, he knew _how._ It had just, up until now, been a matter of _who._

_("Whom,"_ Auguste would have corrected him.)

Hate, Laurent had been told, was the opposite of love. It was straightforward enough: he loved pears and hated broccoli. He loved sunny days and hated rainy ones. He loved going riding and hated having to stay inside and stand still while a servant laced him into outfits that were too tight and unbearably hot. 

He loved Auguste. And Auguste, he was more than sure, loved him.

But Auguste, like Laurent, was a prince, and being a prince there were Certain Expectations.

(Laurent would come to hate those two words.)

There were seven daughters of the Vaskian empire and at least one of them, everyone was sure, would be a fine match for the Crown Prince of Vere. In the meantime, though, the court and the common people would want to see that the golden prince had a healthy appetite when it came to--

("Entertainments," Laurent's father had murmured. "Sins of the flesh," explained Guion. "Fucking," said a guard.)

It meant that, because of Certain Expectations, Auguste would want to be seen with a pet. It meant that every day, Auguste would be approached by two or three simpering, giggling things wearing too much jewelry and too much perfume. It meant that Auguste was always pushing them off of him, golden brows drawn together in a frown. It meant that no one had any interest in talking about anything else.

("Perhaps you and I could go for an evening ride," said a courtier with long, curling red hair. "Who would be riding whom?" Laurent had asked loudly, and Auguste had snorted into his wine.)

It wasn't making father happy, or uncle, or indeed any of the courtiers, but each time Auguste refused the attentions of another pretty pet, he would turn and smile at Laurent, wrinkling his nose, and Laurent would smile back. 

But then Caelestis had come, and like a good silk shirt catching on a protruding branch, Auguste's attention had snagged on him. 

Sweet-faced and fair-skinned, Caelestis was nearly of a height with Auguste and had long, straight hair the color of beaten bronze. He had arrived dressed in riding leathers, shiny boots clicking on the polished floors, and had said, "Come out and beat me in a race, if you can. If you're still gracious when you lose to me, I'll consider letting you take my contract."

And Auguste, captivated, had simply followed Caelestis out to the stables as if he were being pulled on a leash.

(Laurent was left behind.)

Caelestis came again the next day, and the next, always with back straight, chin high, boldly matching gazes with Auguste. Laurent heard people call him clever, cunning, ambitious. 

Then, one balmy summer night, standing on a balcony with Laurent crouching hidden in a dark alcove, Auguste had sighed and called Caelestis beautiful. He'd done it between slow, sensuous kisses, fingers twining through long strands of hair. Caelestis' chuckled response was too soft to hear over the buzzing in Laurent's ears and the searing hot ember in his heart.

Laurent's hatred stuck in his throat and burned his eyes; it rattled in his lungs whenever he looked across the room and saw Auguste and his pet standing together, smiling, laughing. 

("Oh, but he's just what this court needed," said his father, grinning and stroking his beard. "Solid and honest, and good with a sword. Not like these other useless creatures hanging about.")

("You can't hate him," his uncle said, too reasonably. "You hardly know him. Besides, he's only a pet, a plaything. Auguste will tire of him in time.")

("You'd think he was too pretty to be getting a leg over the prince," said a guard, "but I've seen him fight. He's got grit, he does. And a nice ass. Could go either way I suppose.")

In the next year, Laurent got a lot of practice hating Caelestis. He hated the way he walked, hated his tightly laced clothing and muscular limbs. Hated the casual half-braid he'd plait his hair into to keep it out of the way, hated the work of Auguste's fingers as he pulled Caelestis' hair out of its tie and into his hands. 

In the early spring, so close to the lash of winter's tail that frost still crackled on the bare branches of the rosebushes, Laurent was fitted for his first set of real armor, and the country prepared itself for war. A minor skirmish at the border, just King Theomedes taking home toys that weren't his again-- the perfect setting for a young prince's first battle.

(His uncle's eyes had been so, so dark, the hard line of his mouth frightening, but Laurent had forgiven both when he'd said, "a military encampment is no place for a pet." Caelestis had frowned as Auguste had kissed him goodbye: a puzzled expression only momentarily smoothed by the brush of lips against his cheek.)

It had been a glorious two weeks, alone with Auguste, sitting tall in his saddle and trying to look poised and regal as common folk lined the streets, shouting and waving as they passed. At night in their shared tent, Auguste would teach him military strategy and dirty nursery rhymes that would make a guardsman blush. And Laurent cherished being treated like an adult, like an equal, but also cherished being still young enough that when he woke in the night to strange noises in the woods outside the camp, he could crawl into his brother's bed to hide from it. 

("Moaning in the night?" Auguste asked, rubbing sleep from his eyes. "Oh. Ah. I see. Yes, that sounds like the Gluch, that's a predatory creature that lives in these woods. Sometimes, if you look out into the darkness, you'll see two red eyes...")

It had all come to an end in shouting and blood, earth churned to mud by the hooves of horses and the sandaled feet of Akielon soldiers. Something in the air had changed, and Laurent, waiting with his uncle far behind the front lines, had watched the neat blue lines of their men break up and fall to pieces, like a snapped necklace scattering pearls. The first of the men had come back white-faced, hollowed out by grief. And he'd known.

(Damianos. Prince Damianos, of Akielos. Laurent sat in his tent, legs drawn up, face pressed so hard against his knees that he saw stars, and whispered it to himself, over and over. Damianos of Akielos. Damianos the prince-killer.)

He'd seen Caelestis, in passing, weeks later when he'd returned to Arles. Caelestis had only stood and looked at the ornate black coffin that held Auguste's body, pressed back by a crowd of onlookers in various shades of mourning blacks. He'd raised his eyes to Laurent's across the courtyard, unbelieving, and Laurent had waited for that hot rush of hatred to surge through him. 

Nothing. Caelestis was no one, an ambitious whore, a distraction. Only two people mattered in Laurent's life now, and one of them was dead. The other, he vowed, would go down in blood and fear on the end of his sword.

Laurent de Vere was thirteen years old, and he had just learned what true hatred felt like.

**Author's Note:**

> (If you look up "beaten bronze" on google image search you get a bunch of pictures of some horrible eyeball disease. Fun fact.)


End file.
